


Gator Babies

by wndrw8



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:48:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2804945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wndrw8/pseuds/wndrw8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: Rick owns a wildlife sanctuary where Carol runs the books and Daryl is an alligator wrestler. Yeah, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oops, I don't know what this is.

“Everyone’s got to face down their demons.  
Maybe today you could put the past away.”

\--Jumper by Third Eye Blind

 

ONE

 

Carol squints into the sunlight. Above her, clouds threaten on the eastern edge of the sky. Otherwise, the entire wildlife sanctuary is sprinkled with soft spring sunlight. From her perch on the deck of the main office, she can see all the habitats in the sanctuary. A large black bear dozes in the farthest corner. A pair of coyotes, one without its back leg, nip at each other at the peak of a small hill next to the bear. The bat house sits closest to the main office, enclosed and dark in the stark sunlight. 

A shout.

It is her second day of work, her lunch break, and already she is watching one of the Dixon boys wrestle a new alligator into its enclosure. 

She looks back down at the pit. The man below her is the younger of the two brothers—Daryl—the one that gave her a shy smile when they were first introduced. He has one hand around the gator’s mouth, the snout tied by dingy rope, and the other clasps around the animal’s chest. The thing seems wild. It thrashes, shakes like crazy. Like it’s overcome with grief. 

“That’s how most of them are when they first get here,” Rick, the owner, tells her. “All keyed up like that. But she’ll calm down.”

“It’s a she?”

“Yup. Daryl called her in yesterday. Said she was tangled up in a mess of trash off the Mississippi. Lost her baby, too. It choked on a wad of saran wrap.”

Carol stiffens. In the pit, Daryl is all muscle and sweat and grime. He wears a sleeveless shirt, revealing toned muscles along his arms. Hair in his face, he struggles to get the new gator into the mud. She hears him curse, then his body shifts, and he’s pulling the string from the animal’s snout. Green armored skin flashes in the sunlight. Then the animal slips into the murky grey water. 

“She’ll get used to things eventually. They all do.”

Tension tugs at her stomach and she shifts, pushing her lunch away. Aluminum foil crinkles under her hands. 

It’s been a little over six months since the accident. She could count the exact days if she wanted to. At first that was all she did. Ten, twenty five, thirty passed. But counting didn’t help. She still had flashes of smoke, twisted metal and pavement pressing against the shattered glass of the passenger’s seat window. Ed cursing before his skull shattered on impact with the other car. Sofia’s soft whimper and then cold, cold silence. 

It seems unfair to her that any mother should be left in this world when their baby is gone.

Carol wipes her hands on her pants. They are tan, linen. She wears a satin blouse tucked into them, the top button open. Conservative navy heels cushion her feet, the first pair she’s had since her high school prom. Her hair, grown longer since the accident, is pinned back in a stub-like pony tail with a gold clip. 

Sofia would not recognize her, were she still alive. 

“I’m think I’m finished,” she says. “Let’s get back to work.”

 

Inside, she bristles against the cool of the air conditioner. It almost seems too harsh after the softness of the spring Georgia air. She opens the ledger on the desk and begins filing through the numbers. The papers are filled with pencil marks and erasures. Smudged fingerprints. 

Sofia’s homework papers always looked like this—dirty, broken in. The girl was always covered in dust from books and the graphite of number two pencils. Even at a young age, she liked to write her name down on paper, over and over and over. And then when she was a bit older she wrote Mommy, too. Mommy and Sofia. Mommy and Sofia. 

How stupid, Carol thinks, that she did not save any of those papers. They used them to start fires in the fireplace at the house she’s now sold, or combined them with old newspapers and glue to make captain’s hats.

(What she would not do now for one of those silly papers.)

Footsteps echo behind her. The corner of her mouth turns up. “Thank God you hired me when you did. Someone made a real mess of your books. Not to mention your taxes from last year.”

“Huh,” a voice grunts, but not the one she was expecting.

Carol turns. Behind her, the younger Dixon brother stands with a rag in his hands. Grime coats his arms, the fabric of his muscle shirt. She feels a pulse between her legs. Presses her thighs together. “Sorry. I thought you were Rick.”

Daryl nods to her, looks away. “Don’t say nothin’ about the books,” he says. “Rick’s the one that did ’em.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“He doesn’t like asking for help, does he?”

Daryl doesn’t say anything, just turns toward the mini fridge in the corner and pulls out a coke in a glass bottle and a plastic bowl of fried chicken. He pops the coke open with his forearm and drinks, loudly. With his arm up, she can see the expanse of skin below his armpit—the flesh of his chest. Old scars and what look like burn marks mar his flesh. 

She bites her lip.

He catches her staring and lowers his arm.

“Now that I gotcha by yourself,” he says after a moment, “just wanted to apologize for Merle.”

“Merle?”

“That shit he said when he met ya. He don’t mean it.”

Carol flashes back to yesterday—meeting all the employees for the first time. Michonne slinking through the darkness in the bat enclosure. Maggie and Glenn prepping meat to go to the bear enclosure. Sasha and Tyreese sitting on the hill in the coyote habitat, the small dog-like creatures lapping at their faces with canines bared, almost wagging their tails. 

Then Merle in the stink of the gator pit, his hands all mud and grime telling her what nice legs she had and how he wondered what they’d feel like wrapped around his waist.

“It’s already forgotten, Daryl. Don’t worry about it.”

She thinks he’ll go but he stays, just drinking and watching her, cat-like out of the corner of his eye. That’s the thing about the younger Dixon—he’s sly in a quiet way that she likes. Daryl is a hunter. It’s clear in his movements, the way he observes people. He keeps his head down. She has the feeling he is the type of man who would be okay disappearing into the shadows, but nothing about him would allow it. 

“You guys do good business,” she says. “You and your brother, I mean. From the books, it looks like the gator showings are always sold out.”

Daryl reaches into the fridge again and withdraws a fried chicken leg from aluminum foil. He brings it to his mouth, stripping meat from bone. He chews quietly in a way that suggests he has more manners than he lets people see. Chicken grease coats his upper lip, and he wipes it away with the back of his hand. “I never really look.”

“Yeah,” she says. “You all must be doing something right.”

“Maybe I should ask for a raise.”

She smiles. It’s been a long time since someone’s made her smile like that and for a moment she feels the weakened muscles in her cheeks protest. “Too bad Rick is barely staying afloat as is.”

He regards her for a moment. Then he holds the glass bottle out, dangling it between his thumb and index finger at her. “You want the rest of this? I usually just drink the grape stuff.”

“Fanta?”

“Yeah.”

She holds her hand out. Whispers of his fingerprints linger on the glass. It pleases her that this man would share a bottle with her. Carol takes the glass in her hand, brings it to her lips, then thinks of Ed. She stops. Of his hands on her neck, squeezing. Knuckles to bone. The way he kissed her bruises afterwards, his anger bled onto her torn body. His breath smelling of alcohol.

“Hey,” Daryl says.

Her gaze flickers back up. She looks beneath the shag of hair over his darkened eyes and sees the way he squints at her. Like he cares. She sucks in a breath, forcing herself to smile. “I’m still here,” she says and pours the rest of the coke into her coffee cup from the morning. “Thanks for sharing.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> much thanks to those who are reading <3

TWO

 

He watches her the whole week.

She used to be married. He knows because there’s a strip of white worn skin on her ring finger. And it must’ve been bad because she carries herself like someone let out from beneath a heavy shadow. She’s soft and sensitive but he also senses, somewhere deep down, a hint of bite. It surfaced after Merle’s comment about her legs. The way the corner of her mouth twitched and she pursed her lips, squinted at him like he was a piece of shit on her carpet. 

Daryl likes the way she looked at Merle. 

He likes a lot of things about her. 

“Where’s your head at, little brother?”

Daryl looks up, grunts. Merle stands by their beat-up pickup truck, a toothpick hanging out of the corner of his mouth. His jeans, like Daryl’s, are torn and covered in dried mud. The smell of exhaust and sweat hangs heavy on the air around them. The sun’s still up, but lowered on the horizon. Michonne’s gone home already, Maggie and Glenn, too, but Daryl still has repairs to make on the pit fences.

“You thinkin’ bout the new office girl?”

“She ain’t no girl.”

“Yeah, I knew you’d like her.”

“Shut the hell up.”

Merle laughs and lights a cigarette. They’re not allowed to smoke on sanctuary grounds, but Merle does. He always does. “Look, I got me a date later. She’s comin’ by the trailers so I’ll needa clean up.”

“Man, I still got shit to do here.”

“Then take the bus home. Ain’t no hardship.”

Daryl cusses, kicks his boot into the dirt. In Merle’s mind, he’ll always been ten years old. The stupid kid that can’t do anything right. The tag-along. He pushes the tangle of hair out of his face and looks up at his brother. The man stares back. 

Something quiet passes between them, and in the end Daryl backs off like he always does. 

 

It’s nearing 7pm when he finally finishes securing the pit gates. A light rain has started, the soft dense kind that seems to linger in early spring. It coats the skin on his exposed arms, his vest, his jeans. The wind picks up and he can feel the coolness of the night approaching. 

He pulls a leather jacket over his shoulders and is making his way across the parking lot when someone calls out to him. He stops, turns. Carol stands by a broken down looking Honda, her black trousers curling over heeled boots. “Where’s your brother?” she asks. Her hand is over her hair, blocking some of the mist. 

“Left early.”

“Then how’re you gonna get home?”

He kicks at the sidewalk. Something about her catching him like this feels embarrassing. He’s like a kid caught by the teacher lingering after school. “Bus stop’s a few blocks down.”

“In this rain? You’ll get sick. Let me drive you.”

“You don’t hafta do that.”

“It’s nothing. Come on.”

“Naw, it’s fine—”

“Get in the car, Daryl, before I’m soaking wet.”

Although he wouldn’t mind the sight of her soaking wet, he shrugs and ambles forward into the passenger’s seat of the Honda. Shuts the door against the mist. It’s nice to be out of the damp and dark and he likes the smell of the car; something feminine like perfume. Lavender or some shit. 

She asks him where he lives and he tells her. A book rests on the car floor by his feet. Carol shuts the driver’s side door and reaches down, brushing his knee, to pick it up. “Sorry about the mess,” she says. She opens the glove compartment and shoves the book inside, but not before he catches sight of a small pistol. The handle gleams in the setting light. 

“You carry?”

She slams the compartment shut, leans back in the seat. “What?”

“The hell you got that for?”

She stiffens. The muscles in her jaw tense as she starts to car and shifts into reverse. 

“Nevermind,” he says after a moment. “Not my business.”

“No. It’s okay.” She backs out of the parking spot slowly, then turns and heads for the main road. She seems very tiny in the seat. Petite and controlled. Daryl realizes he’s only known this woman for a week, but he already feels like he knows her. He watches her. He knows her ticks, the way she moves and laughs. “It’s my brother-in-law.”

“You’re married?”

“Widowed.”

“Oh,” he grunts. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m not.”

He nods, looks out the window, then back at her. Her eyes, steel, focus on the road. A string of hair curls around her cheek near her ear and he resists the urge to reach out and smooth it out of her face. “You got kids?”

She hesitates and he sees a flash of dark sweep across her, features, but it’s gone just as quickly. “No,” she says. “You?”

“Nah. What’s goin’ on then with your brother-in-law?”

She presses back in the seat and her hands clench the wheel. She’s got nice hands. Damn. He never thought they could be such a turn on, but that was before he was looking at her slender fingers, her prim, unpolished nails. “When my husband died, I came into a bit of money. Not a lot… but my brother-in-law thought he deserved it more than me. He’s been coming to the place I waitress on weekends. Bothering me.”

Daryl grits his teeth. Something hot and prickly starts at his neck. “You tell the cops?”

“It’s not a big deal,” she says. She looks at him, sees his hardened stare. “Really. Don’t worry about it.”

“Ain’t worried,” he says.

But he is.

Carol shifts. “So how’d you get into gator handling? Rick tells me you two go way back.”

Daryl shrugs. Normally he’d tell her to mind her own fucking business, especially when it comes to his life’s work, but there’s something about Carol that’s genuine. He feels like she would listen to anything he said, really listen, and not judge. She’s not like the others—Maggie and Glenn and sometimes Sasha. He can tell when they look at him, all they see is a country boy. A hick. Stupid redneck. But with Carol, it feels different. She looks at him like she’s expecting something. “Always liked them, he says. “They’re tough, you know. They got that… skin like armor.”

“Yeah?”

“And their hold… I never seen any damn thing like it. They grab you and you’re under. Thrash you around a bit and you’re done. They’re fast and quiet-like. Not show-off’s like some other animals, you know?”

She takes her eyes off the road for a moment and looks at him. “A lot to be respected for.”

“That’s all I’m sayin’.”

She nods. He likes the way her blouse opens at the top, revealing narrow collar bones. She’s skinny. Maybe a little skinnier than he’d normally like, but it’s okay in her case but she’s taut. He can see her muscles coiled under the sleeves of her shirt. Tense. A woman with substance. With a background. She has weight to her, but not in the body. With Carol it’s in her eyes. 

He has her drop him at the end of the driveway where his trailer is. 

“You sure?” she asks.

But he’s already opening the door, his feet out of the car before she’s even come to a full stop. He’ll be damned if she sees the shithole he lives in. “Thanks,” he says. “I owe ya.”

“No, not at all. Really. I enjoyed the company.”

He lingers there, peering in through the open passenger’s seat door at her. The mist has lightened. He plays with a piece of the rubber window liner, rolling it between his fingers like chewing tobacco. “So what’s the name of that restaurant you work at?”

“Daryl…”

He turns away, shrugs. “Was just thinkin’… maybe I’ll stop and get some pie sometime.”

He looks back and she’s grinning. When she smiles, it changes her whole face. The skin in the corner of her eyes bunches and she’s light—the darkness ebbs. He thinks it’s the most beautiful thing he’s seen in a long time. “We got pie. You like apple?”

“Yeah.”

The smile slips away but the brightness of it lingers in her cheeks and eyes. “Morrissey’s,” she says. “Just down by the high school at the end of Howard Street.”

As she turns onto the road, she waves. 

He stays there and watches the car until the tail lights disappear into the darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you've left me love, thank you so much! you are appreciated

THREE

 

The next day, she’s curious about the female alligator so she goes out to the pit during her lunch break. The four male gators (she knows they’re male because they’ve got a blue tag attached to one of their ears) as they push around in the water, then beach themselves on the island on the center of the pit, sunning themselves. 

But the female gator doesn’t. She just slinks along the top of the water. Barely floating.

“Come to see a show, little mama?”

Merle grins down at her. He’s got a scary smile, the kind that hints at ugly things. “Don’t call me that,” she says. “I’m not your mama.”

“Aw, don’t be raw. I’m just messin’ with ya.”

Beyond them, Daryl works at the far end of the enclosure. His feet are in the water and she can see the liquid stains creeping up his pants. His eyes meet hers, flicker to Merle. Something like anger, she thinks. Mistrust. 

She nods to the water. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Girly over there?” Merle shakes his head. “Won’t feed.”

“Is it stress? Maybe from being held?”

“Maybe,” he says. “But… tell ya the truth, I think she’d be the same way if we released her.”

Daryl is still watching them. She can feel his eyes on her from across the way. 

“Why you care about that ole gal anyways?”

Carol touches the pit gate, feels the grit and dirt of the day. Wipes her hands on her pants. “I feel bad for her. Don’t you?”

Merle’s eyes flicker and she catches a bit of Daryl in there, somewhere pushed far back. Merle is someone who cares but doesn’t want to. She can see it in the way he hesitates before leaning down so his forearms are resting on the gate, his face close to hers. “Tell you what, little lady. You ever wanna give this a go, I’d sure love to train ya.”

“Us rolling around together in the mud? Doesn’t sound too appealing.”

“Oh, it ain’t just muddin’,” he says. “It’s huntin’, too.”

He says huntin’ with an emphasis and she shivers in response. Once upon a time, hunting might’ve seemed like something exciting to her. But now that she’s seen death so close and so personally, she doesn’t think she’d ever be able to kill something. 

Or maybe she could.

Since the accident, layers of her have been shedding, peeling away. She is rawer now. All muscle and iron and bone. She feels more now like an exoskeleton of something long dead. (Except that car ride with Daryl when she’d felt like she was on fire.)

Carol smirks. She pats Merle on the wrist and turns away, heading for the office. “If we’re being honest,” she says, “I’d much rather Daryl trained me.”

“Ouch,” Merle whistles. “Goddamn, woman.”

When she chances a glance back, Merle is still smiling but Daryl is nowhere in sight.

 

Daryl stays hidden throughout the rest of the day, and when she leaves, late again, he’s not in the gator pit. He’s not in the office building the next day for the daily staff meeting, either. Carol tries to put it out of her mind. She focuses on the numbers, the smudges on her hands. But by lunchtime, she’s thinking about returning to the pit to check on the female gator. It feels important to her somehow that this mother should be okay. Carol wants her to be okay. 

And it doesn’t hurt that she’s itching to see the younger Dixon’s face.

From the fridge, she grabs her lunch bag, draws out an ice cool can of grape Fanta.

Once she gets outside, she considers drinking the soda herself. It is humid for a spring day. The air feels heavy and sluggish, wet. It sticks to her face, along with the blaze of the sun. She’s wearing a sleeveless shirt on account of the heat in the morning dew, and she picks at the hems as she approaches him. “Hey,” she says.

Daryl looks up at her. “Hey yourself.”

His voice is terse, hard. She licks her lips. “What’s up?”

“Workin’,” he says. “You here to flirt some more with my brother?”

Heat flies to her face. She shoots him a biting look. “I just asked him about the girl gator. He said she wasn’t feeding. She still carrying on like that?”

He looks at her. Blinks. Turns and looks out at the pit. “Didn’t see her eat,” he says. The initial toughness in his voice has faded some but he still sounds on edge. When she looks over his shoulder and sees Merle staring at them, she understands. “But that doesn’t mean she didn’t sneak nothin’.”

“You think maybe she did?”

That flicker of kindness dances across his eyes. Then fades. “Maybe,” he says.

Carol nods and holds up the Fanta. The condensation from the can slides down her fingers. She watches Daryl’s eyes as they skim over the drink, then jump back to her. He tosses his hair out of his face. “Take it, Daryl.”

“Well, ain’t you a peach.”

It looks like he’s going to be mad at her. Like she’s embarrassed him in front of his brother, but he doesn’t say anything, just reaches forward and grabs the soda. He chugs the whole thing down and crumples the can in his fist. 

His eyes are still so dark. 

She burns.

(It was the wrong thing to do; it’s too soon. He’s not right for her. He doesn’t like her. Why did she even try?)

After a few more seconds, Carol turns and begins walking away.

“Hey,” his voice grits out at her.

She turns back. He makes such a nice picture there, so dirty and raw and broken but undeniably man. He is still standing, no matter what has gone down between him and his brother and whoever else has used him in his life, which she imagines must be plenty of people. 

He lifts the can a bit, nods at her.

Maybe he just wants her to go away. Or maybe that is his way of giving her a silent thank you. 

 

(Still, when she comes back from her lunch break the next day, she finds a half drunken bottle of coke on her desk. She unscrews the cap, listens to it fizzle and hiss. She tilts the still cool liquid back and she swears she can taste him on it.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks much for sticking with me <3

FOUR

 

Daryl decides to go to the diner about a week later. It’s a Friday night and he’s got nothing better to do. Merle’s off at a bar with some girl and the trailer’s quiet. So quiet. It’s one of those spring nights where the air is just stale, dead. Nothing moving. 

And he wants pie.

 

Morrisey’s is a typical old school diner—tiled floors, bar stools lined in red. It smells like old coffee when he walks in. There are eight booths, plus the bar. Three booths filled. He takes the one in the back corner, near the kitchen, so he can see the whole place. 

He stretches out, one arm resting on either side of the top of the booth. He lets his legs sag open, boots up. 

“It’s late,” she says.

He looks up. Carol looks different here than she does at the sanctuary; jeans and black tennis shoes, a matching black t-shirt that clings to her small frame. Her hair’s pulled back like it normally is but he doesn’t see the telltale clip. “Not that late.”

“We’re closing in forty minutes.”

“Hmm,” he says, “so…”

“Pie?”

She smiles at him and he feels like such a douche. How can she not be mad at him? He acted like an asshole the other day when all she was trying to do was show him some kindness. That’s all Carol does, show him kindness, and he just pushes her away. 

“We got two slices of apple left. I’ll give ’em to you on the house.”

“Whip, too?”

She laughs. “Whatever you want, pookie.”

He looks up at her through his hair as she curls away, disappearing behind the bar counter. He watches her move. She seems comfortable. At home. Probably has worked here for years, he thinks, and it’s funny how that goes against what he thinks of her. He expected her to be some college educated woman, but then Rick told her she wasn’t. And then he found out she was widowed, and the gun, and when she wore that sleeveless shirt the other day he saw a deep ridged scar on her chest, like a bone that’d been fractured and broken the skin. 

She brings him the pie and leaves to tend to the other tables.

The diner closes and the brother-in-law never shows up.

 

But the next week, he’s halfway into his first piece of pie (pumpkin this time, no whip) when a large man bursts through the front door, rattling the open sign hanging on the glass. Daryl looks up. Carol’s startled, dropping the dirty dish she held onto the counter.

The man takes a seat at the first booth, his eyes on Carol. He’s tall—maybe close to six two or six three. He wears a uniform, like a cleaning jumpsuit. Blue. He has bags beneath his eyes and has a large nose that appears to have been broken more than once. 

Daryl stills in the booth. He pulls the fork between his teeth, wiping it clean, then sets it on the table. 

“Carol, honey,” the man says.

She glances his direction but doesn’t immediately move his way. Instead she takes care of the dirty dish, says something to the cook, looks in Daryl’s direction.

If it weren’t for the situation, Daryl would have an instant hard-on from that look. It’s a look a woman gives to a man when she needs him. When she’s seeking reassurance. He’s never been one to reassure anybody but now, suddenly… she is looking to him and that makes him feel like somebody. 

Almost silently, Carol walks over to the man. She places a hand on her hip, turns so her back is to Daryl. (She has a nice backside.) And he tries to make out what the man is saying. 

Nothing. 

But then Carol is moving and he hears her say, “Let’s not do this here, Adam. Come on. Outside.” She takes her apron off and sets it on the diner table. 

Adam stands, his bulk rippling. He is a big man, loaded with muscle. Like Tyreese. Daryl wonders if Carol’s husband was like that, too. If he also followed Carol around, demanding her attention, using his bulk to break down her body. 

Daryl stays close behind them as they wander outside towards the dumpsters. A light is on in the back of the diner and it splashes shallow light across the pavement. 

“You can’t keep doing this. I work here.”

“Come on, Carol. Just the house. What’s it to you, anyways? I know you got a nice new place now.”

“I told you. You buy full price or nothing.”

“Look, ” he growls and Daryl rounds the corner just as the man pushes up into Carol’s face, his index finger shoved into her chest. 

“Back off,” Daryl barks. “Stand the fuck back.”

The taller man hesitates. His mouth closes as he turns, sizing Daryl up. “The hell are you?”

“Leave her alone.”

“She’s my sister-in-law. I’ll do what I want with her.”

Daryl steps forward and grabs a fistful of the man’s shirt. “She ain’t yours,” he grits. 

Adam opens his mouth, closes it again. He smirks. Then his gaze falls on Carol. “Why do you care? Damn, you don’t even know the bitch.”

“Watch your—”

“Whoever you think she is… she isn’t.” Adam turns so they are facing each other. He’s several inches taller than Daryl, and so much heavier. “She’da opened her legs for every man in town if my brother didn’t keep her in line.”

Daryl pauses, the back of his neck prickling.

Then heat. 

He swings. 

His knuckles catch Adam in the mouth and he feels teeth, spit. He swings again and gets the bigger man in the temple. Once more in the nose and Adam careens backward, quiet, his arms swinging like a clown. He looks silly. Then his knees shudder and he lands on the ground, on his knees. Daryl goes in for a fourth punch but Adam grabs his fist, socks him in the stomach.

They collapse a tangle of arms on the pavement. Oil smears his skin, blood. He hits Adam twice more in the nose and then small arms are around him, pulling. He smells perfume. Carol rasps at him to stop and he does. He lets her draw him off the bleeding man beneath him and they stumble away. 

“Get in the car, Daryl.”

“My truck is—”

“Get in the car.”

He looks at Carol, realizing for the first time how this might have consequences not just for him but for her. She looks angry. She looks scared. He draws back. There is blood on his hands—some of it’s his and some of it isn’t. “Okay,” he says.

She goes inside and when she comes back out, she has her apron in one hand and her keys in the other.

 

She drives him to a small cabin in the woods just out of town. His joints stiffen up on the ride so by the time they get there, he can barely get out of the car and into the living room where she ushers him down onto the couch. His back hurts. His wrist, too. 

He is getting to old for this shit.

“Daryl, you shouldn’t…”

“What’d you think I was gonna do?”

She exhales. “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know.”

He leans back against the couch and closes his eyes, focuses on the way the ceiling fan stirs the air around him. It smells like potpourri in and lavender again. He feels a pinch of cold on his hand and when he looks down, Carol is kneeling in front of him, running a wet washcloth over his bloody knuckles. 

He stiffens.

“You don’t have to.”

She shakes her head. “You didn’t either.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Why?” She looks up at him. Her eyes are big—green and blue flecked. She licks her lips. “Why do you bother at all?”

He looks down, hiding under bangs. Shrugs. When her gaze flickers away, he reaches out with his good hand and touches the side of her ribcage. “Where’d you get that scar?” he asks.

Her cheeks blossom pink. She swallows. Her hand smoothes again over the tender flesh on his knuckles and he winces. Then she looks up at him. “My husband was driving drunk. Hit another car.”

“That’s what killed him?”

“Yes.”

He keeps his hand on her ribcage, feeling the heat of her body. Her heart beats wildly and he tries not to think of his own—hammering loudly in his ears. He feels like he is drunk from her. From her gaze and the closeness and the way she’s kneeling in front of him. “He used ta hit you? Your husband?”

For a second it seems like she’s going to stand up and tell him to get out but she doesn’t. She shakes her head. Her hand stops, still cupping his bloody one. “How did you know? I don’t want to be… I don’t want people to be able to tell.”

“It’s him,” he says. “The way he talked about you…you ain’t deserve that.”

Something in her face breaks. Her lower lips trembles and she looks down at the floor. Laughs softly. Then she takes his bloody hand and kisses his palm, brings it to her cheek. He notices then that she is shaking.

“Hey,” he says. 

He runs his thumb over her cheekbone. She is a sharp woman, angular, but soft in the eyes. They catch him and hold tight as he leans down, ignoring the pain in his side. She meets him halfway and catches him off guard in a kiss. Warm and chaste. When she pulls back, she looks scared, like maybe he’s going to hit her. 

Instead, he leans back in, kisses her again. 

She smiles against his lips. 

 

She’s not entirely nude by the time he gets her laid out on the bed sheets. Her bra’s still on and he practically tears it down her stomach to her a hold of her breasts. Night falls in strips through the corner window, the light soft as fog. It touches the crown of her head as she looks up at him.

Being with Carol is different. He feels an urgency he’s not felt before. Not just from the pressure in his dick, but a pressure in his chest, too. He feels like it is important to show her how gentle he can be, how much he can love her with his hands and his mouth. And he does.

Being with her feels safe. 

He loves the way her eyes flicker up at him, the way she whimpers, everything about her. When he reaches between her legs, her breath hitches in the most perfect way and again when he lowers his mouth to her stomach. 

She says his name once. Nothing else.

She’s quiet and reserved as he would expect, but the way she bites her lip when she comes is enough to send him into an unexpected roll of pleasure and he lets go inside of her with nothing between them.


	5. Chapter 5

FIVE

 

When she wakes up, her body hurts. She feels a million different muscles painfully tight—ones she hasn’t used in years. Her thighs are bruised. Her lips feel swollen. There’s that tingling tightness between her legs and when she sits up, the room spins around her. She reaches out and steadies herself on the bed frame.

Daryl is still there.

He’s got the sheets bunched around his waist. His chest is bare and one knee pokes out of the covers to the side of the bed. He’s dirty. Leftover mud still tangles in his leg hair and there’s a few dots of blood on his wrist. 

Carol rises. She puts on a button up flannel and yoga pants, makes her way into the kitchen. She’s voraciously hungry, the first time in forever it feels like, and ransacks the cabinets trying to find something to appease her stomach. She settles on shake and bake pancakes and coffee. Dark roast.

The smell hangs heavy in the air as she settles at the head of her small kitchen table, looking out through the living room windows and into the woods around the cabin. Leaves. Dew. Green. She takes a bite of pancake. Chews. 

Sofia’s picture and favorite doll rest on the bookshelf in the corner of the room. From their spot, they are higher than everything else, giving Sofia a birdseye view. She’s only seven in the picture. This was before she cut her hair short, and it spins long down her slender shoulders and over a polka dot dress.

Carol puts her fork down.

Her throat feels suddenly dry and when she reaches forward to pick up the cup of coffee, an intense pain shudders through her chest. 

“Mornin’.”

She looks up to find Daryl sauntering across the kitchen tiles. He’s got his undershirt on and his jeans, but no boots yet. His hair is a mess. He sniffs at the coffee. “Go ahead,” she says, nodding to the cabinet where the cups are. 

“Y’alright?”

“Will be.”

He settles on the wooden chair next to her. The smell of him—his cologne, his sweat, drifts over her. He looks bashful peeking out at her from beneath the mess of hair. “I didn’t hurt ya or nothin’, right?”

A smirk seizes her lips. It feels so foreign to her she initially tries to stifle it, but stops. “I’m fine, Daryl.”

He eyes her pancakes. She pushes the plate across the table, fork and all. His eyes waver, draw to her, then recede. He picks up the fork. “Not hungry?”

“They’re mix.”

“So?”

He stabs into the heap, metal piercing fluff and golden brown skin. It’s been a long time since she’s cooked for real. But now seeing him sitting here, obliterating the shitty hot cakes she whipped up in five minutes, makes Carol feel like trying again. 

(It terrifies her.)

She watches as he finishes the pancakes and sips on the coffee, steam rising in front of his face.

“We can’t do this again.”

He looks up at her. Swallows. “You didn’t like it?”

“Of course I liked it.”

“Then… what the hell’s the problem?”

Carol sighs. How can she tell him without really knowing herself? It’s just a feeling. A feeling like no good can come of this. Like it’s too soon. Like she shouldn’t be fucking around with her coworker when her baby girl is six feet under. 

“Carol?”

She smiles at him and it hurts. “When you’re ready, I’ll drive you back to your car.”

 

He doesn’t talk to her for two whole days at work. She smiles at him, leaves grape Fantas in the office refrigerator but he leaves them untouched and never smiles back. It hurts. It tears at her and she doesn’t understand why. Not really.

It infuriates her that he never drinks the Fantas.

So the next Thursday it’s eighty degrees and she goes out to the pit, Fanta in hand, and slams it down on one of the posts along the gator gate. He looks up at her, knee deep in mud. He’s wearing swamp boots and the straps wave loose over a white undershirt stained with sweat and mud. His hair is plastered to his face. 

“What the hell’s your problem?” she demands. Her voice comes out more desperate than she means. 

Daryl wipes the sweat from his eyes. Beyond them, Merle’s stopped working to watch the show. “My problem?” he asks. “The hell’s your problem?”

“You can just… stop talking to me?”

“Didn’t seem like you wanted me to.”

“I never said that and you know it.”

She feels like a petulant child; heat searing her face. Her skin seems to prickle all over. Her neck is sticky, sweaty. She wants so badly for him to keep trying and she’s deathly afraid he’ll give up. “Hell,” he says, “what do you want, Carol? Don’t seem like you even know.”

She recoils, frowning. Around her, the heat of the Georgian land buzzes with cicadas, the deeper hum of mosquitoes brewing hordes. It smells of bog stink and too much sunshine. She touches her neck, shakes her head. Does the only thing she knows how and walks away.

“Carol.”

She hears him grunt. A splash of water.

“Damn.”

When she glances over her shoulder, she sees him struggling to get out of the swamp boots. He shudders forward in the muck, then manages to pull his left leg free of the rubber. His right leg follows and he comes storming after her in his dirty jeans and undershirt, his yellow work boots stained dark by mud. 

He breathes down on her. His eye twitches and he puts his hands behind his head, leans back and exhales. “You should know,” he says. “Found the girl gator dead in the water this morning.”

Carol stiffens. The buzz of the cicadas is oppressively loud. She feels a bead of sweat itch at her shoulder blades before disappearing into the fabric of her blouse. She thinks about that gator dying in the night like that, in the pit with no one around and it tugs at her throat. Her eyes water.

“Don’t be like that,” Daryl tells her. His voice is low, rasping. “Ain’t nothin’ to cry about.”

“I’m not crying.”

He grunts. “You think I didn’t see that picture in the cabin? I saw it,” he says. “That your daughter?”

Carol stiffens. 

It is very hot. Why did she stay in Georgia? She could’ve moved north. Maybe gone to Colorado, bought a place in the mountains. Maybe that’s what she’ll do after the house sells. Just pack up and go. 

“Those scars,” she says, trying to muster up enough bite but instead it comes out tired sounding. “Who gave them to you? Merle? Or was it your daddy?”

“Hey,” he growls, and steps into her so suddenly that Carol flashes back to Ed. 

She draws back. Tenses. He seems to realize what’s happened and stops immediately. His eyes run the length of her body. He recedes a step. They stand there like that, staring at each other. 

“Sorry,” he says after a while. 

She licks her lips. Her breath feels sharp, like icy air, as she exhales. “Me too.”


	6. Chapter 6

SIX

 

Daryl drinks himself deep into the bottle over the next couple of days. Work passes in a sluggish haze. He has a headache from Thursday through Saturday and only by Sunday as he’s sitting, spread out on the porch of the trailer, the warming sun on his face, does it start to fade. 

He nurses a bottle of fireball whiskey. Nasty shit. It blooms through his veins as he sips, watching the trees, the barren land before him riled on a breeze.

How does he always fuck things up? Merle is in his trailer banging some busty brunette and he’s sitting here, laces undone, a few days of scruff on his face. 

Merle’s always telling him how weak he is, how useless.

(Maybe he’s right.)

Daryl lurches forward towards the truck in the dirt lot in front of his trailer. From the other trailer, he catches a whiff of cigarettes and hears laughter. His chest tightens. He stomps over to the truck and turns on the radio, loud. Poison blares through the stereo. He lights a cigarette and pops open the hood, running a rag through the dust that’s settled over the engine.

He’s got half the engine torn out and oiled by the time he hears a car approaching through the music. It’s not the brunette—she left about ten minutes into his work, so he looks up, squinting into the sun, and is surprised to see the broken down looking Honda trailing dust behind it. 

It rolls to a stop a few feet to the right of the truck and Carol steps out. Dust plumes around her. She’s wearing this blue sleeveless blouse that buttons in the front, and it’s open just enough that he can see her collarbones. It makes him weak, the sight of those bones.

She leans back against the driver’s seat door of the Honda.

“You need somethin’?” he shouts over the music. 

She purses her lips, stares at him. 

Eventually he turns the radio off. They stand staring at one another, him elbow deep in grease and her all mad. The look in her eyes starts to irritate him. It’s like he owes her something and he’s never owed anybody nothing before, doesn’t owe her shit at all. 

“I said, you need somethin’?” His voice is gruffer than he means it to be.

She crosses her arms in front of her chest, uncrosses them. This is the inherent awkwardness in her—the way she sometimes doesn’t know when to back down, how she can never just let it go. Anger burns his chest. He wipes his dirty hands on a rag and saunters over to her.

“The hell you out here for, then?”

He gets up in her space, closer than he should be probably, considering her dead husband and everything but he doesn’t care. Not in this moment. He just wants to see her break a little; crumble away just enough so he can see her for real. He thinks if Merle were to come outside right now, he’d beat the man into silence just to have this exchange with her. To see her all heated and alive. 

He breathes.

She seems very tiny in front of him. Very delicate in her fancy looking shirt. 

“I don’t know,” she finally admits. “I thought you might invite me in.”

“Thought you decided we ain’t doin’ that no more.”

She exhales and leans back against the hood of the Honda like she needs it for support. The anger from her face has faded and now she just looks tired, unsure.

It deflates him. “Look—” he begins.

“It was the wrong choice.”

Daryl shifts. He is acutely aware of how he smells like diesel and grease and she smells like lavender and dishwashing soap. He swallows. “This some kinda joke?”

“Daryl,” she says. “Invite me in.”

 

The inside of the trailer isn’t as bad looking as the outside. He keeps it pretty bare—just the essentials. He has a stove, a fridge, the bathroom. The twin bed has some old sheets on top and a wool blanket the color of peaches. It smells like cigarette smoke but she doesn’t seem to notice, just fidgets with her hands and turns to face him so her back’s to the stove.

“I had a daughter,” she says. “Her name was Sofia.”

Daryl quiets. He goes to the bed, sits down.

“That’s why I… it’s difficult.”

“How?”

“Same accident as my husband.”

He had the feeling but sitting here watching her say it somehow makes it feel ten times worse. She bites her lip, looks at him shyly. It’s an explanation, he realizes. Even though she doesn’t need to explain herself. Not to him. He rubs his head. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Carol, I’m real sorry to hear that.”

Outside a breeze bangs one of the shutters against the window. She’s still fidgeting and on instinct, he looks down at his own hands. Dirty. Grime under the nails. 

“Gonna shower,” he says. “Then we’ll talk.”

“Daryl—”

“I wanna touch you,” he says, “but not lookin’ like this.”

She goes still and a faint rouge creeps up over the edge of her collar. Carol has very blue eyes. They seem darker depending on what she’s wearing or how she’s feeling or if she’s yelling. Right now they are a dark, thick blue. Sad. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to do anything to change that.

 

When he finishes in the shower, she’s lying on the bed, on her back with her hands behind her head. It surprises him at first; the position is innately vulnerable. She looks up at him, blinks. He grabs a bottle of tequila and pours himself a glass, then sits down on the edge of the bed next to her. 

Beyond them, through the window, clouds race by. 

They sit like that for a very long time. 

“I don’t know how to do this,” she finally says. “I just know that I want to be with you.”

He looks over at her. Lying flat, her hair curls around her neck, whispers of whiter, lighter strands under the dark. He grabs her hand, kind of rough, and she seems startled but then eases back and lets him rub her knuckles with the pads of his fingertips. 

After a while she sits up next to him. It feels like she is waiting for something, like a confirmation, but he doesn’t know how to reassure her. He just knows that he’s good at loving her, likes loving her, so he figures he’ll just do that.

But she surprises him. (Carol is nothing if not surprising.)

He’s just about to bring her knuckles to his lips, when she leans into him all of a sudden, like she’s going to kiss his neck but she doesn’t right away. Her hand goes to his chin and her breath flits over his skin, whisper like. He gets hard in two seconds flat. Harder even when he starts to feel her lips and tongue. 

Grunting, he shifts her onto his lap and starts kissing her back. He can’t stop his hands from roaming, grabbing, claiming. She’s soft and supple as fuck.

Her hands work over the bulge in his pants and everything’s going alright when she tries to take his shirt off. He stops her, shifts so she’s lying on her back on the bed and he’s on top. The first time they did this, he had on an undershirt for a good part of it and the room was so dark… 

He straddles her, tugs her pants down her legs. 

“Daryl,” she breathes.

He gets her shirt off, gets his pants halfway down his legs before he lowers himself down over her, kissing her hard. She slips her hands over his biceps, his neck. When they wander underneath the fabric of the tee he’s wearing, he stiffens. Her fingerpads graze a mass of scar tissue that runs the length of his back and he stops. Grabs her wrists. Holds them to the bed for a minute. 

She tenses for a moment but doesn’t struggle. Then her body relaxes and her fingers turn, brushing the inside of his wrist. She’s looking at him intently. As if she’s saying she understands. 

(People build walls upon walls upon walls.)

He lets go of her wrists and when he pushes inside of her, her hands go to his neck, nails digging deep.


	7. Chapter 7

SEVEN

 

The grass in this section of the cemetery is yellowing, overexposed to sunlight due to lack of trees. The entire area is pretty dismal, although it’s not supposed to be, surrounded by an urban mecca of dense highways and houses built on slabs of concrete. It feels barren. 

She should’ve cremated Sofia. It would’ve been better than sticking her in this plot—hugged tight on all sides by Ed and his family. 

Before, whenever she would come here, the anger would engulf her. Then for a while she’d just come to pray. But the prayers never worked so then she sat. She listened to the sounds of the wind and the cars on the highway, wondering if she would ever have the courage to silence it all. 

But in the past week, Carol’s been here twice and hasn’t felt any of those old emotions. 

(Now she’s just sad.) 

After a few more moments at the gravesite, Carol stands and brushes the dirt from her jeans. They are new and much tighter fitting than anything she would’ve worn when Ed was alive.

Do you recognize me, Sofia? she wants to ask. Sometimes she doesn’t recognize herself. 

Carol turns. Daryl stands there by his truck, cigarette hanging from his mouth. He’s cleaned up good—no dirt on his skin and he’s shaved the scruff from his chin. The cuts on his knuckles have scabbed over and today he wears jeans with no holes or frays, a plain black t-shirt that looks barely worn. Maybe new. 

Her sandals crunch over the gravel as she makes her way back to him. Around her, the trees are budding green, springing back to life after a long winter. “I feel like having a drink,” she says.

He nods and draws on the cigarette. Embers flare then wane, and the smoke disperses around his face. “Want me to take you somewhere’s nice?”

She tilts her head, feels a smile tugging on the edge of her lips, even though they are here, and she still feels a little like she needs permission. “How nice are we talking?”

“’Sa vineyard. Bout half an hour north.”

“I’ve never been to a vineyard.”

He eyes her, draws the cigarette out of his mouth and brings it down to his side. It feels like he’s going to reach out and hug her, but he doesn’t. He wouldn’t. It’s not him and it’s not her. Not anymore, at least. 

Instead he ambles over to the passenger’s side of the truck and opens up the door for her. She slips past him, smelling cigarette stink and faint cologne. On impulse, she leans into his neck, sniffs. A smile seizes her face. “You smell nice.”

His cheeks pink. He looks down and the shag of hair covers his eyes.

 

The highway wanders out of close knit houses and acre long department stores into stretches of land with nothing but grass and trees. The lanes narrow from four to two and she catches her first glimpse of the Appalachians in the north about fifteen minutes in. They aren’t towering mountains, but soft ones—ones that mold, quiet but stark, against the sky.

“We’re going there?” she asks.

“Yup. You been before?”

“Once. A camping trip with Ed. Sofia was little.”

The road narrows again and delves into a collection of s-curves and switchbacks. They ascend—the engine groans and Daryl downshifts. Trees multiply, brushing the sides of the road. It is greener here than it is closer to the city, wetter, and cooler too. Carol pulls her sweater tighter around her frame as brisk mountain air spills in the open windows. 

Eventually Daryl takes a side road and they turn into a driveway almost as narrow as the truck, and it shoots up the side of the hill almost vertically.

Carol grabs the side of the passenger seat as they bounce up the pavement. Tension spools in her gut and she reminds herself that this is not that night. It’s not raining and no one is plastered drunk and angry. 

Daryl is not Ed.

(That’s the most important thing.)

They get to the top of the drive and a large rustic house rises in front of the windshield, surrounded on three sides by vines and wood stakes. Daryl parks in the back and they climb the stairs to a deck where an impressive expanse of the Appalachians stretches below. Small tables made of cast iron litter the deck. 

Carol grips the railing. The vineyard veers steeply down the hill in front of her and the scent of sweet tang hangs on the chilled air. 

“What d’you like?” Daryl asks.

She feels a faint blush over her neck; she’s never had enough wine to know what she really likes or doesn’t like. Ed was a whiskey man, and after the accident that’s what she dug her heels in with—Jameson and Johnny Walker when she was feeling particularly bad. “I don’t know,” she says. “Whatever.”

He seems unsure of himself, of the entire thing, and lingers a second in the empty space. Then he nods and brushes the hair out of his face. “A’right,” he says. “Don’t go anywhere.” He saunters through the door to the bar inside the house. Glass windows allow Carol to watch as he talks for a few minutes with the bartender—a young woman with curly brown hair that sticks to the sides of her face. 

Daryl says something and the woman laughs, then places a bottle of red wine and a bottle opener on the bar, along with two glasses. When he comes back out, it’s just the two of them on the deck. All the other patrons are huddled inside the warmth of the enclosed glass. 

The wind pushes at the thick strands of her sweater but she doesn’t feel cold. 

Daryl grunts as he pulls a chair up the one of the cast iron tables and puts the bottle between his thighs, works the opener into the cork. It’s unreal to her in this moment—him sitting there looking so adorable with the beauty of the vineyard and mountains in the background. She gets that familiar sensation of panic. Like something bad will happen. 

No good moment comes without sacrifice. (She learned that the hard way when God answered her prayers about Ed but took Sofia in the process.)

She sits down, watching him fumble the bottle opener.

“You don’t drink wine?”

He grunts. “Never had much use for it.”

“Then why’d you bring me here?”

The cork pops out of the bottle’s neck and the sweet but bitter smell of a strong red filters out. Carol licks her lips as he pours. Red splashes the glasses. Daryl shrugs. “Thought you’d like it,” he says. “Do ya?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” he says. “So let’s drink.”

 

She consumes more of the bottle than he does and eventually the tension of the morning and this new place and experience begins to fade. For Daryl, too. She can tell by the way his posture changes. He leans back—his legs splay open, his boots resting on the heels with his arms slung over the back of the chair.

They order a plate of food and as they’re eating, it hits her that he’s driven them all the way out here, to a place he normally would never set foot in, just because he thought she’d like it.

She leans in across the table, touches his hand. It is amazing to her how much beauty still remains in this world. 

He stops eating. “Hmm?”

“Thank you, Daryl.”

He stays silent, looking at her. His eyes grow dark. She thinks he might get mad but he doesn’t. He just sort of nods at her and then grabs her wine glass, finishing the remnants of the red.


	8. Chapter 8

Eight

 

You have two choices in this world—be swallowed up or bite down first. Right now Carol looks like a woman baring her teeth. 

She’s standing in the parking lot at the sanctuary. Her feet, exposed by her sandals, are dirty from dust and gravel. She points her gun at Adam who stands less than five feet away from her, his hands held up in front of him. The look on the man’s face is something between shock and amusement. But the look on Carol’s face is ten times as interesting. She looks steeled, tired, mad. 

Daryl watches from his bike, hand on the knife he keeps over his belt.

He believes that if Adam were to step any closer, Carol would not only shoot him but kill him.

“Carol, honey,” Adam says, a hunt of a grin tugs at his lips. “Where the hell’d you get that, huh? You don’t even know how to use it.”

Carol fires a shot into the ground inches from Adam’s foot. Daryl startles. From their enclosure, the coyotes let loose a howl and Daryl can almost picture them standing there, ears perked forward in the dimming evening light.   
He steps forward slowly. 

“I told you to get back in the car,” Carol says. Her voice is surprisingly calm, just like her face. It betrays very little. 

“Come on, honey. Be reasonable.”

“You be reasonable. Stop bothering me at work.”

The parking lot falls silent for a bit. Adam’s eyes flicker down to the gun, to Daryl, back to Carol. He lets his hands drop but doesn’t move to take a step back. He seems kind of confused, like he’s got the wrong girl. Like maybe he wants to start this over somewhere else, a different time maybe when she wouldn’t have talked back to him or stuck a gun in his ugly face. “You can’t have what’s rightfully mine,” he says.

“It’s mine. It was left to me.”

“He was my kin.”

She snorts. “I think I suffered enough for it, Adam.”

Adam shakes his head at her, makes a circling motion with his finger. He looks kind of deranged in the dim light. Yellow. Sick. “You don’t know what suffering is, sweetie.”

Carol purses her lips. The corner of her mouth pinches, almost like she’s smiling at him but she’s definitely not. “The deputy… Shane, you remember him? I told him all about Ed. You think he’d blame me if you ended up with a bullet in the gut?”

Adam shifts on his feet. Gravel crunches. Daryl feels his senses stretching into the night, straining to feel the shift, the moment when he’ll have to jump forward and take the man down. But Adam steps back. The feeling passes. “You really did fuck that deputy, huh?”

Carol’s eyes ignite. Daryl steps forward but she holds out her hand to him, shakes him away. “We weren’t fucking,” she says. “He just cared what happened to me.”

Everybody goes a bit quiet after that. The receding sun flickers, flecked by clouds and the feathered tree line. 

“Christ,” Adam says. “Goddamnit, Carol.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“I’m gonna let it go for now.” He looks at her a little more before spitting in the grass to the side and kicking his foot into the dirt. “But you gotta know you’re wrong.”

They wait there like that, squared off. It’s getting late and already the air has cooled, tinged with night. Faint wind rustles the grass and trees. 

Eventually Adam turns and makes his way back into his truck. 

Carol lowers the gun, clicks the safety back on, shoves it in her purse. When Daryl reaches her side and touches the small of her back, he feels her shaking. But you’d never know. That’s the thing he likes about her—it’s not that she’s not scared or overwhelmed—it’s that she feels everything but keeps plowing forward regardless. 

“Y’okay?”

She looks up at him. “I was really gonna shoot him.”

“But you didn’t.”

The truck spins onto the main road, kicking off its last plumes of dust and disappearing into the trees. Silence pervades once again. 

“I can drive you home,” he says. He touches her waist. It feels out of character for him but he knows it’s the right move by the way her eyes soften.

“You think he’s gonna keep at it?”

He fishes her keys from her purse, unlocking the passenger’s seat door. His hand stays on her waist as she moves around the passenger’s side door, as he guides her down into the confines of the car. He is a little afraid to let go but eventually he has to. “Don’t think so. Seemed like you scared him pretty good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She looks proud of herself and he realizes he is proud of her, too.

 

He’s been staying with her for the past few days, so it’s not a huge surprise to him when they reach the cabin and she leaves the door open for him. He follows. Her shoulders are tense and she doesn’t look at him, doesn’t say anything except to tell him to take his dirt caked shirt off so she can clean it.

The combined living room/kitchen smells faintly of brown sugar and nutmeg, remnants of the apple pie she baked yesterday and shared with everyone at work. He likes the smell and he likes coming home to this place.

(Coming home to her.)

“Put it with mine,” she says and nudges a half full plastic basket into the center of the room. The lights in this half of the space are off, shadowing her face even more. She was all but silent on the car ride home and now he senses she’s still shut off. Waning adrenaline. 

He rubs his chin, grunts. Normally he’d go to the bathroom to change but…

He pulls the dirty shirt over his head. The air in the room feels cool against the sweat slicked skin of his back. Her eyes dart up to him, questioning. He throws the shirt in the basket and then bends down in front of her, scars bared, to pick it up. “I got it,” he says. “Make yerself some dinner or somethin’.”

Her eyes burn into him. Not mad, just curious. She stares at his chest and he flinches, but instead of asking him about the scars, she just leans in and kisses his neck. She’s on her tiptoes and when she pulls away he feels the wisp of her breath, the smell of her perfume.

“Was a long time ago,” he says, feeling his skin heat slightly. “Anyways, the old man’s dead now so…”

Carol looks at him for a long time. Then she takes the laundry basket from him and places it back on the ground. Her palms smooth over his chest as she leans into him and kisses his neck, his cheek, the corner of his lips. “Forget the damn laundry,” she says. “It can wait.”


End file.
